I received my brand new GelaSkin a couple of days ago, and yesterday (at 2am) Boyfriend and I decided to make a video of the application. What do you think? Oh, and the GelaSkin is perfect, by the way. I’ve had one before so I knew I liked the GelaSkins in general, but this motif is incredible (it’s “Crows” by Nicoletta Ceccoli). And no, I’m not being sponsored by GelaSkins – I’m just a little bit in love.

When it comes to the present part of Christmas, I had my Christmas Eve yesterday. You see, ever since I borrowed an SLR camera a while ago I’ve been planning to buy one for myself, and after much research and pro & con-lists with Boyfriend and Cookie, I decided I wanted a Canon EOS 500d. I planned to buy it in January when I’ll have more money, but after a while I started thinking about working out a way to buy it ASAP. This way, I could experiment and learn how to use the camera when I have no school or other things keeping me busy, and I could take lots and lots of Christmas photos.

Yesterday I went with my mother to town to do some errands, and we decided to stop by a place where I could buy the camera. Now, I knew I wanted a tripod and a better lense than the one that comes with the camera, but I’d decided to buy them in January and probably online. But… well, what was I supposed to do when the shop had a rather sturdy tripod I could afford and the exact same lense I’d been drooling over online (which was a Canon 50mm f/1.8, for you nerdy darlings)? So, yeah, my Christmas came a little early, and I’m practically melting with joy every time I see him – yes, my camera is a “him”, and he hasn’t got a name – yet (any suggestions?).

I am determined to fill the blog with better photos from now on, as they really do make all the difference. Just to let you see how much of a difference, I shot pretty much the same photo with the two old and the new camera. None of these photos have been changed in any way, except for me writing on them, that is.

When the image gets this lovely from just using the automatic settings on my EOS, can you imagine what one could do when one understands more about the manual settings? I’m in love!

First of all: I do not claim to be an expert on the subject. All the tips in this post are simply based on my personal opinions and experience, but I do think a fair few people out there will agree with me … do you?

A black background with white text will always be more difficult to read than the opposite. I should know – my very first blog had a black background – because I wanted it to stand out – but I realized rather quickly it was rather tiresome if you looked at it for more than two minutes. Don’t get me started on bright pink or yellow backgrounds, which is like an instant migraine. I always think justified text (that reaches both the left and right margin) looks better than text that’s aligned to the left or center. And while fancy fonts for the body text can seem like a good idea, they are only interesting for the first five seconds. After that they simply make it hard for the reader to figure out the actual content of your blog, and we don’t want that, right?

I think a header should be like a shop window: it should make a lasting impression on the visitor, and should display what can be found inside. This means that the header is the place for fancy fonts (and it’s a better idea to go to Dafont for something special, than to end up with something like Comic Sans, which should have been killed a long time ago) and pictures with proper resolution. Also, if a header is more than about 400 pixels high, most of us people on tiny screens won’t be able to see any of your content, which means we have to scroll to see if you have written anything new. And repeat after me: enforced scrolling is bad.

I prefer the clean and structured ones, but no matter if you like lots of glitter in your sidebar, make sure it doesn’t distract the readers from the actual content – which means blinking stuff is distracting and, for some, annoying. Sparkles might work for diamonds and vampires, but not for your sidebar. Oh, and make sure you keep the useful things, such as the search function, your archive and your Bloglovin’-link close to the top, so readers can find them easily.

Forcing people to listen to your music without warning is bad manners. I’m sorry, but automatically playing music should be illegal. If you’d like to share your taste in music, keep the player, but turn off the autoplay. Just turn it off, you can do it!

Learning basic html can be compared to learning to do a basic makeup. It makes your “face” (read: blog) more presentable when you want to make a good impression. You don’t need much, but it’s very useful for putting images/linked images in your sidebar, for instance, or for creating a link that can be used for sending you mail (which means spam is not very likely). I actually started learning html when I was still at Blogger, and half my posts would look weird or things would turn our wrong without me doing it (no, I don’t like Blogger, sorry). When I understood what the html told my posts to do, it was much easier to fix it.

While a typo once in a blue moon is almost unavoidable, not using the spellcheck that most of post editors have these days is a serious crime. It takes perhaps one extra minute to click the button, then correct your errors, but a whole lot of bloggers out there seems not to care. Trust me, your readers care.

“I’m-sorry-it’s-been-so-long-since-my-last-post-I-feel-really-bad-but-I’m-just-soooo-busy”- posts are becoming a cliché. The best way to avoid them is to decide how often you realistically will have time to post, then stick to it. When I started out I posted mostly once a week, then twice. The past months I’ve been trying to keep it maximum four days between each post, and in December I’m giving daily blogging a go. The point is to keep it regular – this way, your readers will know when to expect a new post, and you won’t have to feel guilty for not blogging every second you have available.

It might be a specific theme (shoes) or sub-theme (Louboutins), a design element (such as my handwritten things), or a style of writing (such as the Queens of Kingdom of Style – just read one post, you’ll see what I mean), but if you can manage to find something that’s you, it will make your blog stand out from the zillions of others out there.

Copycats, or people-who-steal-content-from-others-without-giving-credit, are actually doing something illegal. Not to mention that it’s incredibly bad manners, and makes me question the blogger immediately. We’ve all saved something on our computer but forgot to save the source, but at least make an effort to locating it before posting it. Weheartit.com can be helpful in keeping your sources organized (read how here).

When the news that Topshop was coming to Norway was released, I saw at least thirty bloggers proudly spreading the news. The sad thing is, they all said exactly the same. Being number 24 to report something simply makes you look uninformed. Mentioning it in a post is okay, but dedicating a whole post to old news is a waste of time, both yours and your readers’. The same goes for those catwalk pics that everyone seem to post when they’re feeling uninspired – darlings, if you can’t say anything new or unique, why post them at all? We’ve seen them at style.com anyway.

♮

If you’re looking for more tips on the subject you should drop by Shini’s DIY Blog Design Crime Investigation-post at the blog Park & Cube, which is rather brilliant (both the post and the blog itself).

Images from we♥it – or weheartit, if you prefer it spelled out

I am a system fanatic. I put everything into a system, from papers and sheet music to nail polish and earrings. Not even the grocery list escapes my urge to put things in order (the apples go before the milk, for instance, since the dairy products are further into the shop than the fruit). The only area I am constantly trying to organize to absolutely no avail is my MacBook.

We all know what it’s like. You browse through various fashion blogs – or websites about kittens, if that’s what makes you tick – and find some pretty pictures you’d like to keep. You drag it onto your desktop where it remains for a while, until you can no longer remember where you found it. That’s why it ends up in your “Various inspiration-folder”, where you already have three hundred images stored. They’re all very nice to look at, but they’re starting to take up a lot of space and you hesitate to post them in your blog since you can no longer remember where you found them (because you’re one of those few decent bloggers that actually credit the brilliant people who made all your pretty things… right?).

What to do? JOIN WEHEARTIT.COM, of course! Why, you ask? Because…

♥ … it allows you to “heart” (the verb) images from the website to your own personal “heart” (the noun). This means that not only will you have all your favourite images stored on one page, online (not on your computer, which means a less cluttered machine for you!), but also that you can access them from any computer anywhere in the world.

♥ … it allows you to heart images from any website simply by adding a little button-thing to your browser. So, yes, all those blog-photos you normally pile on your desktop can now be collected in your heart instead. Your virtual, weheartit-heart, that is, of course.

♥ … weheartit.com always saves the source of images you heart, so writing credits in your blog will be easy as pie. You can choose between linking to the weheartit-page like I’ve done, where the original source can be found, or you can credit the source itself.

♥ … it is an excellent website to browse for pictures/photos/digital art (using either tags or a search field).

My virtual heart can be found here… where is yours?

Some of you might remember Vivienne Tam’s digital clutch from HP – some of you might be reading this very post on it, actually. Well, it’s very pretty in pink, but since I am allergic to Windows my infatuation passed away rather quickly. What I really like, though, is the idea of making a laptop/MacBook look good and stand out. And Boyfriend showed me the solution to that long before the digital clutch came along.

Enter Gelaskins! Thin plastic layers that stick to your laptop (be it Mac or something else) /iPod/BlackBerry/gaming device, protecting it from scratches and looking great at the same time.

For the past couple of years my dear little MacBook has looked like the picture above. There’s nothing like some black swirls and a skull to catch my attention, and I like the contrasts between the sweet motifs (the girl, the birds, the swirls) and the dark (the skull and the squiggly things). But in a few weeks I will be lucky enough to have a brand new MacBook Pro, so I think it’s time for some change. I am 99% sure this will be my next Gelaskin:

With the voice of Holly Golightly: “Isn’t it marvellous?”  The runner-up was also very nice, though I think I might’ve had enough of a pink-ish colour scheme for a while:

The best part? In addition to being pretty and protective, they are also affordable, with $29,95 for a skin to fit a 13″ MacBook. And when you tire of it, you simply pull it off, and there’s no trace of it anywhere. Except for the nice lack of scratches, that is.

A while ago I wrote a post about my obsessive listmaking, and Cindy commented and told me how she also likes to cut out pictures from magazines and put them into their own “inspiration book”. I remembered this when I passed by my favourite bookstore the other day, and two minutes later I left the store with a fresh start. You see, I started a project like this sometime in high schoolm but it didn’t turn out very good (I cut out almost everything in the magazine, which means I could have simply kept the magazine as it was), and it had black pages. Maybe it’s because I started reading blogs and realized I can’t stand (visually, at least) blogs with black backgrounds, but I decided I needed something with white pages. Thus begins my newest project (no, I’m not like Lorelai, Cookie, I will finish this one!): to go through all my fashion magazines and be merciless. Whatever survives the process shall be prettily pasted into my new inspiration book (which has a red cover, in tribute to Bridget Jones, naturally). Are Cindy and I slightly crazy, or do you other fashionistas do this, too?

(my little sister, Miriam)

Yesterday I turned 23. It was the best birthday I’ve had since I was a little girl, probably because of the best boyfriend, the best friends and the best family in the world (thank you so much, guys!). I got a new bag, hair accessories, flowers, clothes and chocolates – and Boyfriend earned something like a trillion boyfriend points when he got me a Bamboo (which I’ve suitably named just Bam).

For those of you out there who aren’t supernerds, Bam is a so-called “pen tablet”, which in not-nerdy-language means it’s like a pen and paper, only you can plug it into your computer and create magic with it. I’ve played around with it and my MacBook ever since I got it (taking some breaks, naturally, to eat cake with Boyfriend and Boo, to be surprised with a country-fied version of the birthday song and to watch Dead Man), and I’m so much in love I consider permanently attaching it to my body somehow. You can do everything with Bam! Below are a couple of things I’ve played around with, just to give you an idea. Expect more Bamified photos to come (although I’ll try to give them a more fashionable twist in the future – this is supposed to be a fashion blog, after all).

My sister’s very fashionable friend Sigrid (you don’t mind, do you, darling?)

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Some of you might remember that a while ago I showed you the collage I’d made to hang over my piano (if you can’t remember- fear not! The post is right here). Well, I really like the pictures of Emma, but when Boyfriend found that genius program called The Rasterbator I decided it was time for a change. Put simply, the Rasterbator takes a digital image of your choice and turns it into millions of tiny dots (when looking at it from a distance, the eye can’t see the dots and it simply looks like a regular image). The Rasterbator then creates a pdf-file where the image is spread over as many regular sheets of paper as you wish (thus creating an image that is as big as you’d like).

As you can see, my image is quite big, though I think it would have looked better if it was even larger. I love the symbolism in having the picture of Lucy peeking into the wardrobe hanging right above my piano – sometimes I feel just like Lucy going to Narnia when I’m making a new song.

To create your own gigantic picture, simply do this:

♥ Download The Rasterbator. Yes, you can simply rasterbate images online, but the downloaded version allows you to choose smaller dots, thus creating a better final result.

TIP: If you are using Windows, the program should run just fine. If you’re on a Mac, however, you’ll need to follow these guidelines to make the program work. It might be handy to have a Mac-nerd at hand, since the instructions require that you have some knowledge of working with the Terminal and other nerdy things.

♥ Find a photo you want on your wall. This is actually what I found most difficult, and I had a hard time deciding between Lucy or an image from the kiss-in-the-rain-scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

TIP: It might be helpful to know that if you have a very small room and want it to appear larger, choose an image with some depth in it. The Lucy picture made my tiny room seem so much bigger, and it took me a while to figure out why…

♥ When you choose your image, keep in mind that the bigger the picture, the better the quality of the final result.

TIP: You can do this to enlarge an image that is a little small. Boyfriend did this to my Lucy-image (it was originally 1400×1034 pixels big), but unless you’re a real nerd, you should probably find one to help you before attempting this as the procedure is quite complicated. For the less nerdy of you out there, simply choose the biggest image you can find of your chosen motif.

♥ Run your chosen image through the Rasterbator program. This is where you choose how big you want the final picture, whether you want it in black&white or colours, and how small dots you want.

TIP: I chose dots the size of 2mm. This creates an image that looks good even from a rather short distance, but your printer won’t have to work itself to death.

TIP 2: If you choose it print it in colours, it will use A LOT of ink. If you want it in black&white like mine, the best way to do this is to use an image editior (I use Pixelmator) to make the picture black&white, then choose “multi-color” in the Rasterbator. This will create a black&white picture with lots of detail and shadings, compared to simply choosing black&white in the Rasterbator.

♥ Print the pdf-file that the program created. I strongly recommend printing it on paper originally intended for drawing or painting, as regular printing paper is very thin and will become bumpy because of all the ink.

♥ Before you do anything else, number the sheets with a pencil on the back. This will save you lots of time puzzling it together if the order becomes messed up somehow.

♥ Cut off all the margins on each sheet. The best way is to use a ruler and a utility knife, as the edges have to be as straight as possible to create a good final result.

♥ Attach the topmost row (a strip of the sheets going from left to right) of sheets to each other (check to see that the pages are lined up correctly first) by taping them together from the back. Use a little tape first, check that the result is good, then use more tape to secure it.

♥ When you’ve taped all the rows separately, use tape to attach the rows to each other. Again, use a little tape first, work with it until it looks good, then use lots of tape to secure it.

Voilá – you’re done! If anyone managed to get through this insanely long and nerdy post and decide to create an image of their own, please leave me a comment so I can see how it turned out. And a more fashionable post is on its way, if anyone got concerned with my level of nerdiness…